A large-scale lead carbon battery energy storage system has gone into operation in Saxony, Germany to help regulate frequency of the grid, the latest of several such projects in the country by consortium Upside Group.

Energy storage projects were under construction across four provinces of China, amounting to 340.5MW of new capacity during the first half of this year in the country, according to the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA).

The Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) has set out a three-year research programme to improve the performance of lead batteries in energy storage and electric vehicles. It has called for investment of up to US$2 million per year from governments and research agencies to fund its studies, which will run through 2018.

The failure of a grid-connected storage system at a solar farm in Hawaii is part of the learning process the US island state is undergoing to integrate more PV using storage, according to analyst Dean Frankel at Lux Research.